Since is is a matter of public record, I am not boasting when I say I donated, but only Karl's wife knows the amount. No other advanced country would expect private fund-raising to deal with this. My mother had the free (well, government-paid) program TriCare which would have covered all her needs u...

I heard within the last days Berg's "Seven Early Songs" with the Berliner Philharmoniker. I didn't recognize the name of the soprano (the same one who sang Ravel's "Sheherazade" on the same program) and thought these were wonderful songs. I have a fondness for the work of Alban Berg. His Piano Sona...

The Beckett estate has barred productions of his works for various reasons, such as an all-women "Godot," so they're still guardians at the gates. Like you, I was surprised that they allowed an operatic treatment, but maybe Kurtag provided them with a recording that impressed them. Beckett's mentor...

Well, Belle, I hope you don't leave us anytime soon. To paraphrase Churchill when he spoke of Russia, Ravel is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. We know nothing of his personal life, if he even had one. More than a couple of his pieces, which have already been mentioned, are clearly the works of a mas...

Samuel Becket, who insisted in his lifetime on complete artistic control of every one of his works no matter where in the world it happened, would never have allowed this. I guess he left no estate that maintains that standard, so I would have to take an opera of Endgame on its own terms. Incidental...

John B, i was face to face with Aristotle and a lot more of his paintings-also 4 vermeers! Len Vermeer only has about ten important paintings that survive, and as I'm sure you know, the Met owns more of them than any museum in the world. The catalogue raisonée of Rembrandt, on the other hand, inclu...

BTW, Len, my first visit to the Met Museum was a field trip when I was in sixth grade, and was immediately after they had acquired Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, an impossibility now unless an extremely generous donor was in the position to gift them another Rembrandt. I had motion sickn...

I wouldn't take Storrs as a serious university location under any circumstances, and that's not just because I was lucky enough to be a grad student at Yale. Connecticut, unlike Massachusetts, does not have a strong system of higher education, public or private. My college friend Ted, whom some of y...

Mebee so, mebee so, but in terms of slavery, the Dred Scott decision negated all of that, and the horrendously racist Woodrow Wilson had a father who moved the family from Ohio to Virginia so that he could own slaves. (Otherwise, to make my trivia point for the day, we would have nine presidents fro...

Many years ago, I was working toward an MBA at Johns Hopkins. Of course, it ended up that I had not the slightest interest in having an MBA, but the point is that they allowed one out-of-area elective, which was the first course that I took, and it was art. For some reason that I did not understand,...

Hey, I live in Brooklyn, and I know well that Manhattan is the center and the parts that surround it are outer. If it weren't so, then the Met would be performing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (as it sometimes used to do) rather than Lincoln Center. Yes, but we're making the same point. You come...

Nobody here is old enough to remember this, but it was once possible to rise as far as the lamp in Lady Liberty's hand, as my mother did when she was very young. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/13/nyregion/statue-of-liberty-torch-ar-ul.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Outer boroughs such as Brooklyn? That's a laugh. As John F well knows, if Brooklyn were separated from the rest of NYC it would still be something like the third largest city in the US. Its inclusion in greater New York has always been a bit controversial. "The air-bridged harbor that twin cities fr...

Oh Len, you can practically teleport yourself to NYC. It is one of your and Sue's admirable traits. Of all people, Ulysses Grant, though rated as a failure as a president because of his naiveté regarding Credit Mobilier and other scandals that took place under him, was a brilliant man. He once visit...

David McCullough's forthcoming book on the Northwest Ordinance and the settlement of the Northwest Territory: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4681311/david-mccullough-northwest-ordinance https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4667124/david-mccullough-discusses-book-project-pioneers For those who do not know...

Schirmer published the edition by Artur Schnabel. Was that the one you used? I'm told that it was no Urtext edition but reflected the way Schnabel played the music. So how did he play it? Probably as fast as he could. Beginning at 14:38 aOCMskjSfm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOCMskjSfm0 I can'...

I am reminded of the last movement of the Beethoven Op 13 sonata, which I first learned from dear old Mrs. Troidle using the old Schirmer editions long before anything like an Urtext was ever heard of. The editor was none other than Hans von Bülow, who wrote in an annotation, "This movement cannot b...

So many neglected composers. I've heard two stories about why Brahms refused to accept an honorary degree from Oxford (or was it Cambridge?) One is that he was easily rendered sea sick. The other was that he stated that England was country without music. That was true in his time. There had not been...

Of course, no one who knows me will be surprised that my favorite recording of these works is the one by Bruce Hungerford, which is now on Youtube: https://youtu.be/Sd5nzUyNw0w And, if anyone is interested, I am about to release the only video of Hungerford's playing, a DVD of the Beethoven Fourth ...

For some reason all of the links provided by jbuck never appear as anything but a blank screen. A great big hole in the page and nothing for me to see or hear. Unfortunately. d I'm sorry, Belle. In the future I will try to provide the actual link in addition to the inconvenient YouTube. This was a ...

It is too bad, perhaps, my life centers around PIANOS. But I truly love the organ, collect many recordings of the instrument, but know very little about them. If you were to write a brief essay on pipe organs, the various kinds, and what all the specifications really mean, that would be a great hon...

I always loved that Flentrop organ at the Busch-Reisinger Museum. Biggs did, indeed, make many a recording at Harvard. I had the pleasure of seeing him live in Syracuse, NY one time. I think his wife, Peggy, was at his side helping with stops, etc. The place was packed and it was a memorable recita...

Well, there are all those CDs, which is fine, but the solo piano works of Brahms are horrendously neglected as recital works. When was the last time you heard one programmed, and I don't just mean the Beethoven-bagatelle-inspired works of the late years, as great as they are? I was going to make thi...

It is nothing special, and I don't expect everyone here to enjoy it. It is just excellent, the kind of recital I would give if I were in that position. The organist is not famous, nor will he ever be, just a guy. Why someone of that age is giving a graduation recital is beyond me. I post this mainly...

Obviously, judicial review is necessary in a country that has a written Constitution. Making new law in the common law sense is quite a different matter. In case no one has read it, the Supreme Court decision in Brown v Board preamble states in plain English that there is a universal right to a basi...

Trouble in Tahiti - like Mass , wonderful and so American in spirit! The theater brought out Bernstein's special talents as a composer. Of course, he was also a musician of the first rank and an urbane village explainer to boot. Full orchestration 0_j3T9zrvGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_j3T9z...

Credos https://v637g.app.goo.gl/sLHvuJpQx5yXzE416 9tjsKzhpSwE?start=3561&end=4043&version=3 You call that classical music? Sheesh. (I was in fact looking for the Kadosh movement all by itself--it is as you know the Sanctus in Hebrew-- because it is in about the same category as the Chichester Psalm...

I listened to the Vierne with enjoyment. As I have posted before, Vierne was blind. I know how blind organists learn the music of others. (They memorize scores written in Braille.) How anybody who is blind composes them in the first place, I have no idea. It is easier to accept that Beethoven was de...

Goethe, though a very great poet, unlike Shakespeare had a tin ear, and never wrote Faust or anything else with the intention of having it set to music. Faust is a "play" strictly for reading. Goethe did recognize that a few things would be singled out as songs, but he disliked Schubert's great sett...

All that Democratic control of the House has achieved is to make Trump resort even more to executive order backed up by what he considers national security or emergency reasons. He may not be able to gut Medicare that way, but let's just wait and see what happens when the Caravan arrives at the Rio ...

There is very little in Mass that qualifies as classical music, and my whole point was that Bernstein was a superior modern classical composer. He also had a titanic ego, which meant that this was not enough for him . . . . Mass is serious classical and seriously good. Bernstein's hat size doubtles...

My first experience of the greatest library was when I was six years old and my father was a member of the US Air Force Band, which I believe is still stationed at Bolling Air Force Base. We live on First Street SE, and assuming one could walk across the Anacostia on the John Philip Sousa Bridge, It...

[Bernstein] never came up with anything better than the mixed-message Mass . I agree that the Serenade is one of LB's finest works. But the only mixed I hear in his Mass is the macaronic. Otherwise the message conveyed by both words and music is consistent. Because it is so very much of its time, M...

It looks to be fascinating, and from the stills alone it does not appear to be a trash producion, Sellars or no Sellars. As John F once pointed out, when he wants to, he can create a truly beautiful production.

This is one of my "stumble-ons." I'm sure many of you know it, but it is the first time I ever heard it. It is not, however, the first time I have heard excellent and uncompromised music by LB. Oh, there is a bit of jazz-type stuff in the last movement, but who am I to complain about that when Ravel...